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For a Rising Tennis Star, a Connection, Then Dealing With Loss

Until she was 13, Sloane Stephens knew far less about her father, John, than many football fans who remembered his blazing start as a running back with the New England Patriots and his later stints with the Green Bay Packers, Atlanta Falcons and Kansas City Chiefs.

Three years ago, the 16-year-old Stephens, a rising tennis star, embarked on a phone relationship with her father that evolved into a full-blown friendship, their bond forged by their similar charismatic personalities and prodigious athletic feats.

Stephens could only recall having met with her father in person twice, maybe three times, and now, two weeks after their last phone conversation, she has to decide whether to pay him one final visit.

On Tuesday, John Stephens, 43, died in a car accident in his native Louisiana. His funeral is there next Tuesday, two days after the start of the United States Open juniors competition, which leaves Stephens with an excruciating decision.

Does she drop out of the tournament or forgo saying her final goodbyes to her father and keep her eye on the first-place prize? Stephens, a mobile, attacking backcourt specialist, is considered a strong contender in singles after reaching the semifinals at the French Open juniors and the quarterfinals at the Wimbledon juniors.

To complicate matters, on Friday, while scouring the Internet for stories on the father she now will never fully know, Stephens discovered that her father had another side.

“I told her she’s free to do whatever she wants to do,” Stephens’s mother, Sybil Smith, who was divorced from Sloane’s father, said Friday afternoon. “I think right now she feels that the safest place for her is on the tennis court.”

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Sloane Stephens must decide whether to compete at the U.S. Open juniors competition.Credit
Getty Images

Stephens heard about her father’s death Wednesday morning in a phone call from a half sister who lives in Louisiana. John Stephens was killed in a one-car accident on a road in a rural area near Shreveport when his truck hit some trees at high speed.

“Right after she found out, she cried for about an hour and a half,” Smith said. After that, she announced that she wanted to go hit tennis balls, and for a couple of hours, that was what she did.

On Thursday night, Stephens sat in the players’ box of her good friend Christina McHale during McHale’s straight-sets loss to Maria Sharapova. In the players’ lounge Friday afternoon, Stephens was smiling and bounding from friend to friend.

Vania King, a casual friend of Stephens, said she had talked to her in the past couple of days about the usual girl stuff. “Gossip and clothes,” King, 20, said Friday after her third-round loss to Daniela Hantuchova.

King had no idea Stephens’s father had died until a reporter informed her. “Ohhhhhhh!” she said, reflexively raising her hands to her face. “I’ve seen her since then and she didn’t say anything.”

Smith, an all-American swimmer at Boston University in the late 1980s, said John Stephens took it upon himself to get to know his daughter after it was discovered that he had a degenerative bone disease. “He was very sick,” she said, “and that was pretty much how he came back into her life, so she could know her dad before he died.”

Stephens was drafted 17th over all by the Patriots in 1988, the only player from Northwestern State to be selected in the first round. He gained 1,168 yards as a rookie to finish second among running backs in the American Football Conference. Known for his speed and ferocity, he earned Offensive Rookie of the Year honors and was selected as a starter for the A.F.C. in the Pro Bowl.

He did not surpass the 1,000-yard mark again in his career, playing for the Patriots until 1992 and eventually retiring with 3,440 career rushing yards. As a rookie, Stephens was honored by the N.F.L. for his tireless work with the Roxbury Comprehensive Community Health Center.

It was that kind-hearted, generous person that Smith wanted her daughter to know. So when he made the effort to reconnect, she did not tell her daughter about his arrest in Missouri in 1994 on rape charges, for which he pleaded guilty and was placed on probation.

“I wanted her to have pride in him,” Smith said of Stephens, who had been working at a trucking company, adding, “I’m telling you, John was a very good man with addiction issues that were never addressed early on.”

Smith said her daughter was devastated when she found a story on the Internet about the 1994 arrest and another arrest, outside Shreveport in April, on charges of sexual assault. The charge was pending at the time of his death.

“It’s very sad,” she added, her eyes welling with tears, “because Sloane and her dad became so close. They had a great friendship. She knew a part of her dad that was all good and she was able to be proud of him.”

Stephens asked her mother if her father’s accident could have been a premeditated attempt to end his life. Reached by phone on Friday, Cindy Chadwick, a spokeswoman for the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office, said that investigators have ruled that out as a possibility. There were signs he overcorrected when his truck drifted off the road, Chadwick explained, adding that a similar accident had occurred along the same winding stretch earlier this year.

“She’s searching for answers,” Smith said. “I feel her pain. I look at her and I look in her eyes and I melt because I know how much he meant to her in these last few years.”

In the players’ lounge Friday, Stephens said the past couple of days “have definitely been hard.”

Struggling to decide what to do, Stephens on Friday suggested a compromise to her mother. How about if she plays in the Open and visits her father’s family later?

“One of the things I told her,” Smith said, “is this is the only time you’ll get to say goodbye to your dad and to see the memory of your dad and the legacy of your dad and the people who really loved him. This is the time to feel that love.”